Kingfishers are without question one of the most dramatic and memorable birds on can encounter in the UK. They appear, jewel-like, in their turquoise, blue, and russet finery amidst deep green streamside shadows where they wait, motionless, before plunging dart-like into the water to retrieve a minnow. I have never been especially fond of painting action, finding the moments just before and just after an event more evocative to paint, where the viewer can infer from posture and tension the coiled energy of impending motion or the immediate aftermath of the same.

In the two companion pieces, “Before” and “After,” I positioned kingfishers in postures suggestive of the moment before a dive and just after. In “Before,” the bird occupies the upper portion of a long, vertical composition, and we follow the bird’s intense gaze along the swirling lines leading the eye explosively and precipitously down towards unseen prey. In “After,” the position of the bird is reversed, and it is looking up, moments before taking flight to assume, yet again, an appropriate perch from which to survey the waters below.

Both of these pieces are about a careful balance of positive and negative space, a seamless interaction of representational realism and abstraction, and a strong sense of impending motion.